Maximize profitability, market share and customer satisfaction
SAS Demand-Driven Forecasting drives the development of the consensus forecast in conjunction with the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process. Combining the power of automation, analytics and workflow, it generates the most unbiased and accurate consensus forecast on a large-scale basis.

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Benefits

• Improve forecasting accuracy across your product hierarchy. SAS’ patented statistical forecasting engine has a complete array of advanced forecasting methods to model and forecast your organization’s entire product portfolio.
• Reduce finished goods inventory and stock-outs. SAS provides forecasts that reflect the realities of your business, improving your planning accuracy. With plans that ensure the right products at the right time at the right locations, you can both prevent stock-outs and minimize finished goods inventory – increasing customer satisfaction while reducing costs.
• Enhance accuracy with comprehensive gap analysis and reporting. The solution automatically generates gap reports that indicate the gaps between the financial plan and all individual, departmental and statistical baseline forecasts, with notes indicating reasons. These reports can be reviewed, changed and written back to the data model.

Features

Automated statistical model selection and optimization.

• Analyzes and combines various models to produce a forecast that best depicts your organization at every level of the corporate and product hierarchy.
• Provides hierarchical forecasting for hundreds of thousands of data series.
• Synchronizes and allocates forecasts from any level within the hierarchy.

Model repository with predefined models.

• Includes time series methods such as:
• Single exponential smoothing.
• Holt’s/Brown’s two parameter exponential smoothing.
• Winter’s three parameter exponential smoothing.
• ARIMA.
• Includes causal methods such as:
• ARIMAX (ARIMA with intervention and causal variables).
• Lagged variables/transfer functions.
• Dynamic multiple regression.
• UCM (Unobserved Components Model).
• Lets you add your own custom models.

Event modeling console.

• Interactive JAVA GUI.
• Incorporates predefined holiday events (Christmas, Easter, etc.) and automatic date realignment for moving holidays.
• Provides four event types: pulse, ramp up/down, level shift and temporary.

What-if analysis and scenario planning.

• Plug-in into the SAS Demand-Driven Forecasting applications dashboard.
• Provides what-if planning capabilities using model parameter estimates.
• Lets you change model parameter estimates to determine effects on forecasts.

Demand planning workbench.

• Interactive Consensus Planner workbench (workflow) with GUI.
• Automatic weighted consensus forecast generator.
• Override templates with drill-down/up capabilities.
• Web access for sharing, viewing and authorizing changes.

Monitoring, tracking and reporting.

• Supply Chain Intelligence Center Dashboard with KPIs/metrics.
• Series of interactive forecast performance monitoring and tracking reports.
• Series of alerts (graphical/tabulator) to monitor exceptions.